German Cognates: Start with What You Already Know

Because German and English are both Germanic languages, quite a few words are either identical or similar in the two languages. Words that share a common source are called cognates. Another group of words common to German and English stem from Latin-based words that English speakers are familiar with. Many of these words have direct equivalents in German (for example, nouns that end in -tion).

The following words are spelled the same way and have the same meaning in German and in English. The only difference is the pronunciation, as shown in parentheses; in a few instances, the German and English pronunciation for the word is the same, so you see the English word in the pronunciation (followed by the notation as in English).

The other quirk you may notice is that in German, nouns are always capitalized. In addition, German nouns have one of three genders, as noted in this list by the words der (masculine), die (feminine), and das (neuter) in front of each noun.